Lake Vesuvius - Strapping In
Brady Dotson, of Loveland, Ohio, repels down the side of a cliff at Lake Vesuvius in Elizabeth Township, Ohio, on September 28, 2019.
For Cameron Erickson, a senior at OU studying integrated media, the climbing class wasn’t only an excuse to hang out with his friends, it was to help conquer his fear of heights. “The first day we went climbing, was pretty scary,” Erickson said. “Before I got used to it, I just wasn't looking down at all. I would not take my eyes off the wall.”
Day two of the weekend trip also didn’t do Erickson any favors as climbers had to repel off a 40 ft cliff face at Lake Vesuvius, deep in Wayne National Forest. “The repelling part I was most scared of,” Erickson said. “Just leaning over the edge and completely trusting the equipment.” Despite having a completely redundant anchor and his instructor, David Lackey, to belay him, it’s no surprise that teetering your heels over the edge of a cliff and being told to lean back.
Erickson said he joined the class to find new people to climb with after his previous climbing partners had moved away. Erickson wasn’t always a fan of climbing, but was convinced to try it after watching a few climbing documentaries and finding similarities with other extreme sports.
“It reminded me of skateboarding in a lot of ways,” Erickson said. “You (do) it or you don’t, and that’s a lot like climbing. It’s an individual sport where you are at your own level but we all get to do it together and have a good time together.” By the end of the weekend, Erickson began to feel a little more comfortable on edge. Despite being over halfway up a 50 feet sandstone wall, Erickson tried his luck before beginning his descent.
“At the end of Hocking Hills, I looked over the edge and I wasn’t scared,” Erickson said. “Not sure if I’m over my fear of heights, like without the equipment I would still be scared looking over the edge, but I definitely got over my fear of climbing.”
(Above) Jon Parker ties a Bowline Knot into an anchor to secure repellers to a tree at Lake Vesuvius in Elizabeth Township, Ohio.
(Left) David Lackey of Brevard, North Carolina, demonstrates the construction of an anchor for Jon Parker on September 28, 2019.
Despite getting into climbing for different reasons, every climber I talked to agreed on one thing. The climbing community is growing.
David Lackey believes that a new wave of climbing media might be one of the driving forces behind the growth of climbing culture. “I think there were two climbing movies, one 2 years ago was The Dawn Wall and then Free Solo, that were actually in theaters,” Lackey said. “That’s a really new thing. And climbing will be in the Olympics in 2020 so I think, just people being more exposed to it is just having more people be more excited about it.”
National Geographics 2018 documentary Free Solo, covers Alex Honnold’s, a professional american rock climber, journey to climb Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan without any ropes. The film became the second highest grossing documentary of 2018, collecting over $14.98 million according to Variety.
Lackey wasn’t alone in his thinking as Harrison Law, a sophomore studying outdoor recreation and education, agreed the documentary propelled a number of people into the climbing scene. “I think a lot of people were just amazed by that,” Law said. “They might not necessarily want to free solo big walls like that, but the amount of people that wanted to pursue climbing as a whole definitely amped up after that.”
Beyond documentaries, Law also thinks the continued rise of social media inspires more people to chase new routes. “A lot of climbers will post where they are at, or what they are doing,” Law said. “It’s kind of inspiring to other climbers as well, it’s like ‘I want to go do that’ or ‘I want to get good enough to climb this route’. I think that’s part of the reason why it’s growing.”